Unconditional
by titaniasfics
Summary: Even after three years, Katniss Mellark still cannot resign herself to the death of her husband. When Peeta Mellark returns, she is willing to go to any lengths to keep him with her, even agreeing to abandon everything and embark on a journey that will change everything she believes about love, regret and the persistence of hope. TW: Major Character Death before story start.
1. Lost

**Unconditional**

 **Banner by akai-echo. The loudest shout-out to eala-musings, who beta'd this in no time. She's such a champion. Thank you!**

 **Loosely based on the film** _ **Journey to the Shore**_ **, a 2015 Japanese romantic drama film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. It is adapted from the novel** _ **Kishibe no Tabi**_ **by Japanese writer Kazumi Yumoto.**

 **Written for thegirlfromacrossthepond, who has a birthday today. You are one of my best friends, a brilliant writer, and a wonderful person. I hope you enjoy this offering. It's a little on the heavy side but I thought it would make an interesting, if somewhat poignant, Everlark offering.**

 **Warning - Major Character Death before opening of the story.**

 **Part 1 - Lost**

Madge dabbed at the corner of her mouth with the linen table napkin. I don't know how my best friend always managed to eat without smudging her lipstick while I only managed to look like a half-done up clown, but it was one of the many superpowers that I begrudgingly envied her.

"He's a financial consultant with Capitol Funds. His family has a house in almost every District. Gale has known him since college."

It was her latest set-up – some nice man of marrying age with more money than God and an impeccable pedigree. Someone to take her widowed best friend off of her hands.

I crossed and uncrossed my legs as she spoke. It was a nervous habit I possessed of late. I hated being the center of any kind of attention, especially that of my best friend. There was no definition of persistence that had been invented to describe her.

"Madge-" I began, with the same voice I used to turn down magazine subscriptions at Barnes & Noble.

"Katniss…" she mocked in the same tone. "It's been three years. You could just try it. You know, the dating thing? Let him take you out?"

"I'm not interested – "

"Bullshit!" she spat as she passed our empty plates to the waiter who, to his credit, did an excellent job of maintaining a poker face. "You won't know if you're interested if you don't give it a try!"

"I can't manufacture interest in dating if I'm simply not interested in dating!"

"Fake it till you make it," she said, pulling the glass of ice water and lemon towards her. "You aren't even making an effort."

"I never had to fake anything with Peeta." I sipped my wine to mask my growing anger. How could Madge understand? From the first moment I met Peeta, I knew I'd never have to say anything again in my life without meaning it. He could take it. He could take me.

"Peeta is dead!" Madge exploded, heads turning to see why the stylish blond was suddenly as purple as the radishes in their salad. She dropped her voice but continued. "He has been gone for three years and you-"

"I what?" Are you going to tell me that I'm still young? I can still go out and try to find a replacement for what I had with him? Are you going to sit there with a straight face and tell me that I should just fake it with a man I barely give two shits about in the hopes that he will help me forget my husband?" I shoved my chair back as I stood. "I am tired of you and Effie and Johanna and everyone trying to set me up!" I grabbed my wallet, tears blinding me as I dug around for cash so that I had no idea what I threw down on the table. "I will mourn him until I am good and ready not to, and everybody else can just fuck off!"

I wheeled around, nearly slamming into our same, poker-face waiter, dodging him at the last moment of impact and hurtling out of the restaurant. I had to get home.

My feet carried me automatically down four city blocks before I remembered I could actually take a cab and get home faster. However, I was still too wound up for the strategizing required to flag down a cab near Capitol Circle. So I kept moving through the brisk, fall air, focusing my racing thoughts on just getting home.

I caught glimpses of myself in passing shop windows, stomping like vengeance herself down the street. I had made a serious effort for Madge –taupe-colored dress with matching jacket and a sharp, black belt, matching designer platforms, straightened hair, mascara, eyebrows. Maybe that was the problem. I was so good at looking put together in public that people logically conclude I was okay, that somehow I was ready to become more than just Peeta Mellark's widow.

Impatient now, I didn't bother to wait for the bellboy to open the door to the apartment building, flinging myself inside, slipping as if by predesign through a closing elevator door. I jabbed the number 12 until my thumb ached, counting backwards from fifty to stave off a sudden onslaught of panic. I got them a lot ever since Peeta died and I'd had to visit the behavioral therapist to learn to deal with it. To deal with being alone. After Peeta died, it was the only thing that kept me together. I had a nearly complete breakdown when the news of his death was brought to me. And Madge thought I should move the hell on?

The doors swished open when I'd made it to the 12th floor. With key in hand, I strode to the door of my apartment. Mrs. Dallows, the elderly woman who owned the apartment down the hall from me stepped into the corridor, an expectant smile on her face that meant she wanted to exchange some gossip. But I simply pasted a bland smile on my face, hurtling inexorably towards my home. I crushed the key into the keyhole opened the door to find silence within.

The door had barely slammed shut behind her when I'd kicked off my shoes and searched the apartment, frantically racing from room to room until I found him sitting on the balcony, shielded from view of the surrounding apartment buildings by the wilting ivy of the iron latticework railing.

"Why are you out here?" I snapped, so relieved, I climbed onto his lap and folding myself as compactly as I could.

"Hey, even I need some air sometimes," he said, his hands the whisper of the wind over my hair. It was his way of calming me down. He could just tell when things weren't right with me.

"I thought you'd left," I said, nuzzing his neck, still taken aback by how familiar and real his smell was.

"The way you came barreling in here…" he trailed off, chuckling. "You're happy I'm here, aren't you?" The humor in his words masked his constant need for affirmation. He couldn't stay otherwise unless I were absolutely explicit about wanting him there. Those were the rules. And I had to follow them to the absolute letter.

"Yes," I sighed. "Peeta, I'll take you anyway I can have you."

 **XXXXX**

Peeta's death had not made national news. It was just one of a thousand that took place each year, An early morning swim. The undertow of the riptide current. A body that was never found. My first reaction was to get angry. In fact, I was so angry, I could spit. But it was hard to stay angry when there was no corpse to get angry at. It had been sudden, unexpected and despite its lack of glamour, Peeta's death had put an end to life as I knew it.

I once read that the Japanese have a belief that to call a spirit of a loved one back to us, we should literally beg for it to come. Invite it into our home. Give it all the comforts it once enjoyed in life.. Latin-American Catholics believed that burning incense and praying to sacred objects dedicated to the dead would entice their attention and return them to the world of the living for only one night.

I never believed in such things. I believed it even less when Peeta was taken away, because the idea of a benevolent universe had been shattered by his departure.

But after that first year of relentless grief, I gave in to one night, one black night of methodical madness. I was drinking alone, which I never did before but now I did all the time. I set about to make the most elaborate meal I'd ever prepared in my life. Every manner of dish that Peeta had once enjoyed - my beef stew, fresh sourdough bread, steamed greens in garlic and olive oil drizzled in lemon, a casserole and chocolate pie (since I would never be able to bake an actual dessert like he could). It was more food than I'd be able to eat in one week, let alone in one night.

I sat down at my usual place, staring at his empty seat, the one caddy corner from me. We did not sit at each end of the formal dining room table. No, we took our dinner together in the kitchen, at the small table with four places (six, if you pulled the panel in the middle that expanded it). And he always took the chair closest to me.

"Peeta," I said, addressing the empty seat. I could barely even say his name so it came out in this harsh whisper. I tried again.

"Peeta? I...cooked. I thought you'd like that." I smoothed down my soft orange dress, the summer one with the spaghetti straps. "I pulled out the dress I wore when we went to see Finnick and Annie in District 4. Remember that one weekend we'd plan on going out on the boat and fish but it ended up raining the whole time we were there? How it finally stopped ten minutes before we were supposed to leave?" I looked down, noticing that I was balling the fabric of the dress on my lap.

I thought that deep down inside, I didn't really expect anyone to answer. So when my voice bounced off of the walls and landed back on my ears, I was surprised to realize that I was profoundly disappointed by the silence that followed.

"Madge and Gale got married, about a year after you...left. It was...she wanted me to be in the bridal party...but I couldn't." I scanned the empty apartment we shared ever since we graduated from Panem State College, walls still covered with his favorite paintings, his knick knacks scattered between books on the shelves. Even his sneakers were still on the bench near the door. We had always talked about going back home, to the mountains of District 12, and taking over Peeta's family bakery. We had been so close to putting our plan in place...

"She understood that I was still grieving. I am, you know, still...grieving." I gulped at my wine, my heart racing. "But the truth is, I was angry at her, too - angry that she was going to be happy, that she would be getting married, moving on with her life while my life had ended. I thought it should end for everybody, not just for me." I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. It shook.

I waited. I downed three-quarters of another bottle of wine, picking at my food. And still, I waited. My thinking became foggy with wine and disappointment and finally, a hefty dose of self-loathing at the entire concept of the evening.

"Who fucking sits at a table and talks to an empty chair, Peeta? Who? A deranged fucking lunatic, that's who!" I stood suddenly, the chair tipping backwards while I swayed on my feet. The grief came back to me in one long, relentless blow to my chest. I picked up my plate and flung it at the chair where Peeta should have been sitting. Where he should still be alive and breathing and eating, making those small noises in his throat when he was enjoying his meal, knocking something over because his words were smooth as honey but his movements were like those of an elephant.

I threw my wine glass, shattering it as it missed his chair and hit the divider behind it. "You aren't supposed to be dead!" I screamed, throwing every dish on the table against the wall, shoving glasses onto the floor, overturning chairs and finally, tipping the table itself onto its side. I screamed and wailed and threw what I could find, a whirlwind of madness that ended when I slipped on soup broth and landed hard on my ass.

I tried to survey the carnage but the world was spinning. Nausea climbed up my throat and embittered my mouth but I didn't remember actually throwing up until I woke up the next morning and discovered my dress, my beautiful dress caked, in the shit. My kitchen was trashed, I was hung over worse than Johanna after a Saturday night binge and my dress was covered in puke. At the time, I cursed myself, thinking it had not been one of my better ideas, because every time I fell apart, it took me ten times as long to put myself back together again.

 **XXXXX**

The first time he appeared, it was only a few days later. I was alone in the kitchen, baking cheese buns, the only thing I'd bothered to learn how to make from Peeta when he was still alive. He was the best baker in all of Panem, and he taught me to love cheese buns dunked in hot chocolate. For more than a year after his death, I couldn't bring myself to even look at them.

But eventually, I began to long for them. They reminded me of him, of his family's bakery back in District 12. There was a persistent smell of cooked cheese, the lingering aroma of parsley and rosemary, the slick oil that coated the dough, the baking tray and, when you plucked them fresh from the pan, onto the tips of your fingers.

My sister, Prim, was spending the weekend with me, as she often did, worrying about my being alone. She'd turned in for the night and it was just me in my kitchen which had only just recovered from my tantrum of a few nights earlier. To her credit, she'd helped me collect and toss the broken dishes, scrub the floors and counters and replace the dinnerware that had been destroyed. She even ran my dress down to the cleaners. Much as I scolded her for the expense of taking the train from her college in District 4 to come and tend to me in the Capitol, I secretly appreciated having someone make decisions and take care of things for a change.

Just after midnight, I was pouring myself the hot cocoa and setting the dishes on the table when a familiar shuffle at the front door arrested my movements. Wiping my hands on my apron, I made my way to the entryway in time to hear a loud rapping at the door - a rhythmic combination of short taps and pauses that only one person had ever used. It was enough to make me dizzy from a sudden longing.

I pulled the door open with enough force to send the handle into the drywall, if I had allowed it to get away from me.

"Hello," he said.

I was unable to muster enough wherewithal to do more than step aside and let Peeta in, as if he were coming home from a business trip. As if the moment did not merit so much more.

"You came back," I gasped, wondering why I wasn't howling from the clear evidence of my loss of sanity. He simply stared at me with those unforgettable blue eyes that seemed to bore right through me and see to the other end of time.

"Katniss?" came Prim's voice from the guest bedroom. For a moment, I didn't know where to look or what to do. I broke off my shocked gaze to glance down the hallway where a tiny, seashell night light was used to illuminate the darkness because I hated the darkness most of all. When I looked back the spot where Peeta stood, he was no longer there.

I took a shaky breath, barely able to stanch the flow of tears as I hurried down the corridor to assure my sister that I was okay, even if I was a million miles from anyplace that was even remotely close to okay.

 **XXXXX**

The next time he appeared, he didn't knock. I lay curled on the sofa, listening to one of his favorite songs by The Civil Wars. That haunting melody must have been a beacon because soon, he was toeing his boots off, sliding them over to the bench as was his habit, long before everything had happened and my world had veered into an abyss of solitude. His hair was windswept, his cheeks ruddy and pink. He looked like he'd gotten some sun, which gave me pause. Where the fuck were dead people supposed to get sun? I sat up, unable to move any further, sure that I had gone slap crazy and I'd have to check myself into Capitol General in the morning.

"How long have I been gone?" he asked.

I tried to talk but the only thing that came out was a squeak so I cleared my throat and tried again. "Three years, four months, twelve days, give or take a few. Sometimes I mix the days up."

He nodded, his face so welcome and warm, I wanted to sink into the unthinkable and float like a buoy out to the endless sea. But it wasn't possible. None of this was possible and I knew it. And yet…

He wandered about the living room, touching things here and there. He was not a ghost. The bronze statue of the Eiffel Tower that we'd brought back from our summer European vacation was now off by several inches where'd he set it down after examining it. I wanted to launch myself at him, to ask him if he was really my Peeta or just a figment of my broken mind. I took in his virility instead, his health and steadfastness. The ache I'd been carrying over my heart like bad plaster covering a deep crack became brittle and threatened to crumble, releasing all my animal grief. I panted, trying to keep the cracks from opening and spreading further.

He took the seat next to me, turning his attention towards me. "I guess the best place to start is to tell you how I died."

I nodded, not trusting myself to speech. I could smell him - the aroma of the man I knew as Peeta, a whiff of aftershave and the very faintest smell of sweat, not at all unpleasant. Is this what my mind had chosen to conjure up?

"That morning, you were sleeping so well," he said. "I didn't want to wake you up so I thought I'd go out for an early morning swim."

"What happened?" I croaked out.

"Rip tide. I got over-confident and went beyond the rocks," he said, shaking his head as if he were describing running over someone's foot with a supermarket wagon and not the manner of his exit from the world.

"They never...they never found…" I tried but I couldn't say it.

"Find my body? No, I've been digested a thousand times over. My bones have been picked clean."

I didn't like the image he put in my head, didn't want to imagine Peeta being gnawed at by crabs and other sea creatures. "Why wait three years?"

Peeta looked at me with those bottomless blue eyes, a look I hadn't seen in years, and my heart took a dive into the deep end of insanity. I had begun to forget what that smile was like, the effect if could have. Photos were a poor substitute. "I had to travel to get to you. It's not as easy as the movies make it out to be."

I couldn't stand it anymore. If I was crazy, I figured, why fight it? Why fight this, of all the things in the world to overcome?"

"How do I make you stay?" I whispered.

He smiled, and what remained of the ligaments holding me together melted into insubstantiality. I leaned forward and he quickly took my hand, steadying me.

"You have to simply want it, more than anything else in the world."

I knew that would be the easy part.

 **Part 2 coming soon.**


	2. Journey

**Banner by akai-echo. My deepest appreciation to eala-musings, who beta'd this so quickly. She saves me from death by commas. Thank you!**

 **Written for thegirlfromacrossthepond.**

 **Part 2 - Journey**

"How did this happen?" I asked, when the shock of Peeta, sitting on my sofa, _our sofa_ , sifting through the magazines on the table had subsided somewhat. The light of the afternoon was dimming and I couldn't help but notice the way his eyes were drawn to the fading orange, the warm hue he'd always claimed as his favorite color. "Not garish and bright, but soft, like sunset," he had said once. It was so him, it made his presence in my living room all the more improbable.

"How? I'm not sure how, but it's common enough," he said, turning his gaze, full of the sunset, on me. "Spirits don't actually go anywhere, not right away. Most settle in a place, realize they are not where they belong, then vanish. Only the strong ones…" he trailed off, suddenly looking at his hands, stretching and flexing his fingers as if they were suddenly foreign to his body. "The strong ones take a direction, move, travel, persist and hang on to life without quite knowing how or why. It isn't permanent, but I'm not the only one this happens to."

"Is that what you were doing? Traveling?" she asked.

Peeta nodded, having left off his examination of his hands and, taking one of mine, traced a fingertip along the fine veins beneath the skin. My breath hitched at the unmistakable warmth that radiated from his body, heat that now radiated through me. His heat inside of me. "You don't remember anything, at first. You don't know who you are. All your energy is expended in just...becoming...again." His eyes moved upwards to catch me staring as he spoke. I was mesmerized by all of it. "Your life is like a shadow that is cast behind you - if you chase it, it always stays just out of reach. I knew right away that I was in the wrong place. I had to first remember, and then take the road home."

"You came home...to me? Not to District 12?" He had come to where I was, here, in the Capitol, and not to our family home in the mountains.

He raised my hand to his lips, and I finally saw the breaking of emotion, the preternatural calm shattering into wet tear drops as he kissed my knuckles, each in turn.

"You are my home."

 **XXXXX**

I wondered at the fuel that drove him across the long miles, the confusion of finding himself like a shipwrecked vessel washed on a foreign beach. I thought about the way the weather had changed on the day of his drowning, how it had quickly turned from sunny and welcoming to frigid and forbidding. When the rescue operation turned to recovery, my only moment of clarity was when I observed the way the sky had gone from joyful to mourning, just as I had. I remember there were storms in Annie and Finnick's eyes as search parties combed the beach, setting out on their vessels, only to bring back desolation. When he came together on that beach and became himself again, did he realize he was doing it under my sky? Were the bloated clouds and angry winds the first place he'd mark on his compass, beneath which he could feel my torn heart crying out to him across sea?

I thought about these things as his cheek rested prostrate over my hand, wet and ruddy. Now I understood that a creature reborn of salt and water would also be at the mercy of the sun and the wind. I reached out my free hand and caressed the skin of his cheek and neck, thrilling that this was my Peeta, my husband. I lived in a reality that accommodated such things and, for once, I didn't question it the way I did every other thing metaphysical. I understood in that moment the meaning of faith.

He lifted his head just as I bent to kiss him. A small whine, like a lancing of pain, escaped his throat, and I realized I had not been the only one missing their other half of themselves. In the confusion of his re-becoming, he had sought me out - blindly at first, without knowing whom he sought. But he'd searched as he became more himself again. And he had come back to me.

My fingers drifted from his cheek to the messy waves of ashy-blond hair that were just a half-inch from being too long, I gently tugged at the ones that rested on his neck, pulling back only enough for him to see the supplication in my eyes. His nod was short before he helped me to my feet and led me to our bedroom.

 **XXXXX**

"Are you happy that I'm here?" he asked after.

"Yes," I said, listening to the powerful heartbeat beneath my ear. It was as real as the breath that filled and escaped my lungs.

"You are the string that holds me here," he said quietly, the tips of his fingers gliding over my skin.

I turned my head up to look at him. "Then I'll make sure to never let go."

 **XXXXX**

I sincerely attempted to continue my life after that. For a couple of days, I tried going back to work, tried resuming my normal routine where I attended to my duties in a distracted, half-hearted way. But on the morning of the third day, when I turned to the place at my side to see my husband's profile, outlined by the dim light of a streetlamp filtering in through the blinds; when I remembered that I had given up hope of ever seeing such a thing again, that not one moment was guaranteed to last, I decided not to go to work. Not on that day and not for several days afterwards.

It was how I ended up accepting a lunch date with Madge. I worked with Johanna Mason, a tough, no-bullshit girl from District 7 who was also very good friends with Madge. She called her immediately upon my second absence. My friends had already been trained by the dark moments of the last several years to never underestimate a sign from me. I, in turned, tried not to think about how low I could sink. The scars along the inside of my wrist were enough of a reminder of that.

I could have done without the constant calls to my house - from Madge, Johanna, Prim, but also my mother and my aunt Effie, so I gave in and went out to meet Madge. I dressed impeccably, with more style than I knew I possessed, just to assuage them. How could I tell my family that my husband was home, he'd come back to me, and I had no interest in them, in the world, in life as they knew it? That I was fine but for all the reasons they could not have imagined?

"I could always just quit my job," I proposed that evening over dinner. I slid a hand over my belly, sunken in before he came, now swelling with his baked bread and casseroles so that I had nearly returned to the weight I was before his death.

Peeta's fork paused in mid-air as he took in my words. He studied me in that same, strange way he had of looking, not at me, but through me, and seeing more than just me. A shiver raced up my spine.

"Don't you like your job?" he asked finally.

"I do, it's just, well…" I stammered, my chest squeezing shut as the panic that I'd managed to keep at bay since Peeta's return made it's ugly reentry. I balled a napkin in my hand, searching for a way to remain in control.

"Katniss," he said gently, setting down his fork and reaching a hand out to mine. "You can't lock yourself up inside the house with me. You need money. You need to interact with others."

"But...I don't know...how long you will stay," I panted. "I want...to spend every...moment with you."

"As do I," he said, imploringly. The look on his face was so sad, it broke my heart. "I want to spend every minute of the rest of my life with you, too." He pulled me towards him and kissed me, despite my gasping breaths. My heart slowed its frantic pace and my anxiety subsided.

"Let's make a deal," he said when he'd pulled back, his eyes twinkling and I knew that he was happy again.

"Go ahead."

"Don't quit your job. But you could ask for a short leave of absence. A month, perhaps. And we take a little trip."

I leaned back in my chair. "I haven't been anywhere but here for the last three years."

"I know." His hair fell in waves over his forehead, which he brushed aside. He'd agreed to let me cut his hair and the results had not been bad.

"How did you know?"

Peeta resumed his meal. "I just know things. So, are we on for a little expedition?"

I reached my hand across the table and took his. I just couldn't get enough of touching him.

"Okay. Let's go."

 **XXXXX**

The train barrelled with deceptive silence along magnetic rails. We hurtled through the forests, the gentle swaying lulling me into a deep contentment. I leaned against Peeta, who dozed beside me, his chest rising and falling almost in sync with the rocking of the train. I shifted my head slightly, listening to his breathing, counting each time he breathed in, breathed out, the repetition both comforting and reassuring. When he slept, I was often gripped with an irrational fear that he might stop breathing, that the cosmic rift of his existing after not existing would suddenly be rectified and he would leave me again.

But the fear dissipated with each breath he expelled, the warm air rolling in wonderfully predictable waves against my cheek.

We move south, traveling one day and one night. We had reserved a private cabin and settled into the slim bed, covered in plain but clean sheets, a stiff, foam mattress and two large, impressively soft pillows. We took turns washing in the small bathroom, after which Peeta opened the cabin window, letting moonlight and the cool night air into the room. It was part of his old routine, together with his habit of lining his shoes up perfectly against the wall, laces still double knotted since he had only toed them off, not bothering to undo them. It was so him, it brought me to the edge of tears, which I bit back as he returned to bed.

As I took my place against his shoulder, I whispered, "Where are we going?"

Peeta's lopsided smile was visible in the dark cabin, illuminated by moonlight from the open window. "We are going to visit a man I met along the way. It was my last stop before I came to you."

I listened, curiosity now eating me up. "Tell me about him."

"His name's Haymitch. Haymitch Abernathy. I kind of...stumbled on him. He gave me a job delivering newspapers. I was with him for nearly a year."

"A year!" I said, nearly sitting up, my heart beginning to race in my chest.

"I...when I came back...I didn't know who I was or what I was." He swallowed hard. "It's like your atoms are split, spread out over what feels like infinity. I had to literally pull myself together. And then, I just didn't remember anything. I stumbled around on instinct. I spent some time near the seaside, not too far from where Annie and Finnick are, but I didn't remember Annie and Finnick." He rubbed his face, as if his words would make more sense if he did that.

"I made my way across so many towns, each one holding nothing for me, so I knew I had to keep moving. When I found Haymitch, he agreed to give me a job in his newspaper shop and it felt right to accept." He turned to look at me, as if seeking out my forgiveness, which, despite my shock, he shouldn't have had to. He hadn't done anything more than obey his nature. "When I finally realized who I was and where I was headed, I told him I had to leave right away. But I promised I would bring you back." He rested his hand against my cheek. "I'm sorry I made you wait."

"I understand. Not...not everything." I tugged him closer to me. "But don't apologize. You're here now."

He kissed me...he kissed me now more than he did when he was alive. And I reveled in each one he freely gave me, drinking greedily until I was drunk on it.

When he gave me a chance to breathe, he said, "I know that it was a long time. And I wish I could get back every moment we were separated. I wish you could have suffered less."

He took my hand and lifted it, leaving tiny kisses along the scars on my wrist. Long ones that slashed thin, jagged tracks like a shadow hovering over the veins beneath. His lips tickled over the memory of those dark days.

"Sometimes," I whispered, "Sometimes, it was so bleak. I couldn't...I didn't want the sun to come up on another day without you." He paused to look at me, listening to me with such intensity, I couldn't fathom his thoughts. "One night, I gave in. I'm sorry."

He looked up from tracing those ugly scars. "How?" he asked.

I thought back to that night. I had just finished a bottle of wine and fished another from the tiny wine bar beneath the kitchen counter. On unsteady legs, I ran the hot water in the bath tub. I couldn't stand the sound of music or the empty drone of the television. All was silent and I suddenly sank into the darkness of the night and the emptiness of our apartment. It overwhelmed me.

"I was drunk but all could think about was how sick and tired I was of fighting, of understanding the truth of how meaningless everything was without you. I found one of my shavers and broke the razor out of its holder."

I remembered the warm embrace of the water, the sudden calm of having reached the decision to let go. Give it all up. The razor had become warm by that time. My skin was stronger than it appeared, tearing with unexpected pain beneath the metal edge, but I bit my lip against it. The pattern of red spreading in water was captivating as I suddenly became a part of a canvas. I'd rarely in my life experienced such peace as I did then, watching my life slither from my body.

"Prim found me in the morning." I said, returning from that memory to look into blue eyes darkened to nearly black in the moonlight. "A little longer and no amount of transfused blood would have saved me." I laughed bitterly. "I took a vacation in Panem General after that."

He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it and kissed me again. And again. The mystery of that night dissipated under his touch. His kisses were followed with the strong, steady stroke of his hands, the press of his overheated flesh against mine and his mouth, which mapped a path to my pleasure that felt fused directly to the seat of my soul, where all my longing and desire resided. He sought everything - to heal and be healed through our sex. Because no one really wants to let life get away from them, not if what they have to hold on to can sustain them through those moments when darkness threatens to swallow them whole. He had fought back from something darker than night and deeper than the absence of everything, but so had I, though my journey had taken me to the center of myself. We were both survivors in our own way.

And here we both were, wrapped in this dance of love, two beings reborn from the darkness and water. A forced metamorphosis under extreme circumstances that had yielded something undefinable and luminous for its rarity.

 **XXXXX**

Haymitch Abernathy lived in a small town in the heart of District 11. It was stereotypical of such towns in the heart of the midwest - clapboard storefronts on homey buildings with towering roofs boasting large attics; windows framed in quaintly painted wood and adorned with sheer curtains that billowed in the breeze. Katniss saw more white picket fences than she thought ever existed, garden gnomes that smiled merrily under a sheen of dew and dirt.

They arrived in the early morning - most shops would be shuttered for another hour, at least, but Peeta didn't seem too perturbed with arriving at such an hour.

"Haymitch isn't much of a sleeper," he said as they dipped into a small diner to have a typical local breakfast of coffee, eggs, bacon, grits and toast. I had a terrible craving for something sweet and subbed my grits out for a danish, which made Peeta smile broadly as he watched me devour all of it.

"Hungry?" he asked, eating at a more civilized pace.

"Starved. I haven't felt this hungry in years," I said, slipping off my shoe and burrowing my toes under the hem of his jean. Somehow, I managed to touch the skin of his ankle with the tip of my toe, which made me sigh in satisfaction.

"It's a good sign. A very good sign," he said as he downed another cup of coffee.

We headed up the main road through the downtown, turning a corner until we reached a dilapidated storefront that was spared the indignity of outright decay by the sprightly painted blue and yellow sign of Abernathy's Newspaper and Magazine Shop. Peeta jiggled the front door and found it locked.

"We'll go around back," he said.

We slipped down a narrow alley between his building and the next until we reached a yard where garbage cans, an overbaked firehose and a chipped watering can held their vigil over a garden. Or, what had once been a garden, but now it was an overgrown patch of brambles and weeds, in the midst of which were still the various tiny plastic signs for a remarkably diverse quantity of fruits and vegetables, now worn with age and weather.

Peeta reached under a ratty foot rug to pull out a single key, which he used to unlocked a wooden door desperately in need of a good cleaning and varnish. He held the door open as he called inside, "Haymitch!"

A string of muffled curses, followed by a shuffling and even a muted thump came from the caverns of the old building. After several moments, a frumpy man of about mid-fifty appeared at the door. His hair was black, peppered through with silver and grey. His eyes were remarkable, of a gray color that were clearer than mine and could possibly be deemed beautiful if they weren't somewhat bloodshot and unfocused. His skin, likewise, was a darker shade than mine, giving him the air of an exotic creature, if he hadn't been so patently hungover.

"Peeta!" he exclaimed, though he didn't actually raise his voice. He shook Peeta's hand before turning towards me.

"This is Katniss, my wife," he said, laying a protective arm over my shoulders.

"Nice to meet you," he said, surveying me from head to foot, nodding as if coming to some conclusion.

"Well, then, come on in. Don't stand out here like a lump." He turned, waving us both inside.

We made our way through a narrow corridor with closed doors on either side marking our progress towards the front. But instead of the sales floor, Haymitch lead us up a flight of stairs to the next landing where a door was already ajar, opening onto a small kitchen.

"Have a seat," he indicated to a worn table with four wooden chairs. "Would you like some breakfast?"

"No, we've eaten. Thank you," Peeta answered.

"Well, you'll have coffee, then, while I rustle something up for me."

Haymitch fussed at the counter top and it was then I noticed the tremor in his right hand. More than a tremor, he appear - off phase, like a poor vibration. The result of this phenomenon was that he was making a right mess of everything as he tried to fill the coffee filter with grounds.

I stood, confused but purposeful, and took the coffee from his hands. "Peeta's traveled a long way and wants to spend time with you. I'll make breakfast."

Haymitch gave a gruff chuckle before nodding, and I stared long and hard at him as he took a seat next to Peeta. While they spoke, I rummaged about, looking for something to cook, sure I had only imagined the strange quality of our host. I finally discovered a bit of egg, milk and syrup and proceeded to make French toast as I listened to Peeta and Haymitch talking behind me.

"Your room is still there, just like you left it. I don't much like going into the bedrooms anymore," Haymitch said.

"I appreciate it, thank you. I wanted to show Katniss where I'd been and, well, I did promise."

Haymitch gave a grunt of approval. As I turned the soaked slices of toast, I heard Peeta's voice drop to a whisper. "So, what do you think? Didn't I tell you?"

A pause hung in the air, during which time I tried to focus on not burning the toast while I waited for anything that would allow me to understand Peeta's comment. There was only the sound of simmering butter until Haymitch finally spoke again.

"I'm disappointed. She looks nothing like her."

I flipped the toast one more time and set it on a plate. When I placed it before the older man, I schooled my features as Peeta continued his light-hearted banter. It was heartening to know that he'd spoken to Haymitch about me, but what on earth did the news seller have to be disappointed about?

When breakfast was done and cleaned up, Peeta led me to the room he'd occupied when he'd first stayed with Haymitch. It was a simple space, walls dressed in old-fashioned wall paper of a striped design that called to mind the set pieces from _I Love Lucy_ , including the solid, square end tables and the simple lamp covered in a damask lampshade. A full-sized bed took most of the space, dressed in a cream-covered lace-knit coverlet under which was a simple, ivory comforter. Everything in the room was necessary but there were no further decorations beyond the wallpaper and the only luxury was the firm, lump-free mattress that I tested by bouncing on the edge of it.

"So," I said, smoothing out the coverlet. "What was that conversation about?"

Peeta chuckled as he took the seat next to her. "You mean, when I asked him what he thought about you?"

"Yeah. I'm not happy about being a disappointment five minutes into first meeting a person," I grumbled.

"No, it wasn't like that. I promise. You see, his wife, Maysilee, left him some ten years ago."

"Really? Is he a widower or…"

Peeta shook his head. "No, she just left him. He came home from buying supplies for the shop and all that was left of her was a Dear John letter and a few things she'd forgotten in the dirty laundry. She essentially packed everything and left." He paused, looking at his hands.

"Does he know where she is?" she asked.

"No, she didn't even ask for a divorce." Peeta stared at his hands again, flexing and unflexing them, a habit he now had that he'd never had before and which was borderline distracting. "I'd told him once that you and Maysilee sounded a lot alike. He disagrees, as you can see."

I nodded in turn. Haymitch wasn't the first man to be left by a woman, but to be abandoned in such absolute terms must have been devastating to him. The tremor in his hand haunted me suddenly and I blurted out, "He's dead, isn't he? He's like you."

Peeta nodded. "He's like me, except he doesn't know he's dead. He is the stubbornest old ghost I've ever met."

"You've met others?" I asked, astounded.

"More than you realize. When they figure it out, they disappear. He's taking his sweet time because he doesn't understand his true nature."

My head was whirling now. "But you know? And you haven't disappeared!" The idea of it filled me with a terrible panic.

He took my hand, squeezing it hard. "I'm not ready yet."

"But when you are? Ready, I mean?" I say, biting my lip. I looked away, not wanting to ask anything else, not wanting to break the idyll of our time together. I knew. I'd always known that we were on borrowed time.

We sat in silence for a long while, each lost in our respective thoughts. Finally, Peeta spoke again.

"He drinks alot," he said, confirming what I'd suspected when I'd first seen him.

I shook off the morbid turn of my thoughts and returned to the moment. "So his drinking is what pushed her away…"

Peeta let out a long breath. "That...was the last straw, yeah. I think there were other things. They'd been married for twenty five years."

"Hmm," I said, thinking back to my mother and father, how happy they'd been, how little time they'd been able to spend together before he'd died. My mother was never really able to get over losing the love her life when I was only eleven years old. She'd always said that the years they'd been given had not been enough.

It's the reason she'd gone a little crazy.

It's the reason I went a little crazy, too.

But what if Peeta and I had been married that long? Would things have been allowed to accumulate until the wall between us was too high and insurmountable to overcome? Was that the fate of marriages, even if you loved someone the way I loved Peeta? I thought about the night before he died, the careless cruelty of the words we'd exchanged, becoming a memory I quickly pushed aside before it took shape.

"Now he lives with that regret," I said finally.

"Yeah. Regret is the worst." Peeta said. His eyes lingered in that strange way again, a look that saw more than there was to see. Then he stood suddenly. "Come on, I want to show you around, if you're not too tired."

I smiled up at him, though I still quaked inside. "Lead the way."

 **XXXXX**

We borrowed an old blanket from Haymitch and took off on rented bikes, stopping at the local supermarket to pack provisions before heading out to the countryside. There were paths that wound their way around the historical sites, but Peeta pedaled past those, down paved lanes that slowly changed and morphed into pebbled paths, then compact dirt roads, until we reached fields grown tall with wheat and corn. Still, Peeta pedaled and I relished the hot wind that blew through my hair and the shade that the tall stalks cast on us until the sun was too high to be hidden any longer. Thankfully, we reached our destination at the end of the latticework of fields and trees.

"Do you like it?" he asked as he directed my vision. But I didn't need his help to see it.

It was a large lake, shaded by the boughs of heavy trees. Along the dirt embankment were reeds that grew tall and rigid in the water, amongst which were lily pads of every size, ivory flowers stretching from thick, green stalks. The fragrance of water, earth, flowers and grasses intoxicated me and robbed me of every element of reason.

"It's beyond beautiful," I breathed, wondering if the water would feel as good as it looked.

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" he asked.

I nodded, quickly flipping the edge of my tank top over my head and tossing it in the basket of my bicycle, which rested against a tree along side Peetas'. Following my lead, Peeta undressed and soon, we were naked and free, racing with squeals of delight into the crisp water of the lake, made simultaneous warm by the relentless sun and cooled at its depths by whatever currents fed it. I wanted to dive head first but did not know the topography of this lake very well, so I was content to simply wade into it before sinking below the surface.

"How did you find this?" I asked him once I'd come up for air.

"Like everything else. I stumbled on it." Peeta lay on his back, floating as he spoke, his large arms swaying gently in the water. I couldn't tear my eyes away from the way the sunshine glinted off the blond hairs of his chest. "I was terrified at first - I didn't remember a damned thing but I sure as hell remember how I'd died. So you can imagine that the last thing I wanted to do was jump into a lake, literally."

"So how did you do it?" I asked, tugging playfully at his foot so that his body sank before he resumed floating for a bit longer. He suddenly dropped his legs, straightening to his full height so that he looked down at me.

"Can you believe the first thing I remembered about myself, besides my name and the fact that I was...something unexplainable, was the lake we played in as children. Do you remember the lake above District 12?"

"You mean Miner's Lake? Of course! My dad and I fished here all the time. There was the boat ramp…"

"And the beach. My parents used to bring us there every weekend in the summer. I saw that lake, saw my parent's faces - I remembered it was one of the few times my mom was truly happy."

"Momma Mellark!" I scowled at the name. She was not my absolute favorite person. A sudden memory of her came roaring back. A memory from his funeral. Dressed in black. Hunched over in grief. It had been the most heart the woman had ever shown.

"So after that, after remembering, I lost my fear. I came down here often after my shift ended. Even when the weather was cooler, it was always warm around noon and I'd jump right in."

Katniss swam around him, reveling in the sound of his words, the water cascading over her skin. He spoke to her of the local bakery, to which he had been irresistibly drawn until his memory gave him the answer. Little by little, he had pieced himself back together here. Katniss could appreciate why - so much about this town resembled District 12. It was the trigger he had needed to put the final touches on his existence.

"Why didn't we ever go back to District 12?" I asked later as I lay drying under the sun. I sat up and looked at him. "If we had left, maybe you'd still be alive…"

"That's a dangerous and self-defeating exercise," Peeta said, brushing the hair out of my eyes. "Don't play the what-if game."

"I can't help it. You were unhappy in the Capitol. I knew it. It was wearing you down. Wearing us down…"

He furrowed his brow. "I was unhappy. And maybe that wasn't the best period of our marriage. But I loved you. I still love you, like the first time I heard you sing in the assembly, the day I knew I was ruined for every other girl in the world except you."

I felt the bitterness of those last months well up inside of me and tears began to flow again. It was the significant feature of my guilt - the knowledge that I could have done better. We had been sliding, even though we loved each other the way we did.

"I guess now I have my chance," I say finally, tears dripping from my chin as they overwhelmed me with their abundance. "I feel like I've been saying I'm sorry to you for the last three years but you're here and you need to know. I'm sorry. If I could take all your unhappiness, wrap it up in a rock and toss it in that lake, so that it sinks to the bottom, never to be found again, I would do it."

Peeta smiled, wiping at the mess my face had become, his eyes more radiant than the sun shining down between the branches, rippling like glitter on the surface of the lake water. He cast about and picked up a large rock. "Then here. I hereby place all my earthly unhappiness into this rock. Take it and make it disappear for all of eternity!"

I gasped through my tears at the absurdity of his words but I did it. I took the rock and stood up, naked as the day I was put on this earth. I leaned back, putting all our frustration into the wind up and, with a shout of anger and exultation, I launched that rock outward, watching the parabola it made over the surface of the water until it dipped downward and landed in the lake, far from us. I imagined it's downward plunge with a satisfaction that lifted all the agony I'd cried over right off my shoulders.

"All gone," I said, rubbing the dirt from my hands before I launched myself at him, covering him in wild kisses wherever my lips landed. "Now all of our unhappiness is gone."

He held me, laughing heartily. "Good, because I'm starving!"

Peeta cut up bits of cheese and apple and fed them to me. I'dd had a wild craving for strawberries, which we fed to each other also. "It's been a long time since I felt myself," I said.

Peeta looked down at me and for a moment, with the sun framing his golden head, he reminded me of an angel, floating above. I received the knowledge, with clarity akin to inspiration, that this would not last. And I feared I might never know what it meant to be happy again if he left.

"Why can't I make you stay forever?" I whispered.

His expression became sad again as he brushed the damp hair from my forehead. He moved to speak but I didn't let him. I didn't want him to put his answer into words. I pulled him down and kissed him instead, full of the taste of strawberries, summer and the unbearable beauty of this moment.

 **XXXXX**

We spent the next few weeks in a kind of holding pattern - we woke, cooked breakfast, helped Haymitch in his shop, escaped to the lake in the afternoon and returned to cook dinner together. The old man was full of anecdotes - gossipping about town folks he and Peeta knew but whom I'd never met. But the stories were funny and Haymitch had an ironic way of sharing them. It was a strange alliance, a living woman inhabiting a space with two ghosts who, for different reasons, refused to get on with their immortality. It was funny in a morbid way and I'd decided I'd rather laugh while I still had a reason to.

So I was unprepared for the night Haymitch's nightmare ripped through our sleep, waking us with its lamentation. Peeta was out of bed before me as the old man's shouts cut through the house.

"She's gone!" he cried out, sitting up, his hair standing on end in every direction. "She's gone!"

Peeta sat beside the man, who was disheveled in his pajamas and rumpled bed sheets. "It's just a bad dream."

"No, no…" he said, his bloodshot eyes wide with grief. "She's gone! She's gone for good. I have to go…"

Haymitch made to get out of bed but Peeta put a hand on his shoulder. "It's the middle of the night, man. Let's think about it in the morning."

"Look, kid, you don't get it," Haymitch said, muscling his way past Peeta until he stood in the middle of the room, the light of the distant moon doing funny things with his hair. Peeta tried to plead with him, but Haymitch was in the grip of something powerful, its gravitational force pulling him along, and I suddenly understood. I couldn't believe I had come to understand before Peeta did but there was an element to grief that Peeta had never experienced before. I'd lost him and it had nearly destroyed me. He didn't know what that meant. But I recognized that bone-crushing grief in Haymitch's eyes because I had carried it inside of me too.

"Let him go, Peeta," I whispered.

Peeta shook his head and opened his mouth to speak but before the sound could escape his lips, Haymitch became unfocused. The phase shift I'd noted in the tremor of his hand the first day took over him, blurring his edges, causing him to come into focus and then blur until only the merest aftershadow was left of him. He turned towards me, his eyes losing their luminescence but pinning me in place nonetheless. I gave him a small smile of encouragement. I had walked this path before.

"Go," I said. "Go find her."

He nodded, and in that small gesture, the light that was Haymitch Abernathy morphed with aching beauty, dissolving into the gentle rainfall of moonbeams on the worn wooden floor.

 **XXXXX**

 **Part 3 coming soon! Please review and let me know what you think.**


	3. Release

**Banner by the astounding** **akai-echo** **. Beta'd by the talented and inimitable** **eala-musings** **. Written for** **thegirlfromoverthepond** **. Posted for the loveinpanem "Love Is…" writing challenge on tumblr.**

 **TW: Major Character Death**

 **Part 3 - Release**

"I'm fine, I promise," I said, holding the cellphone in the crook between my neck and shoulder as I spoke to Prim and packed at the same time.

"I know, I know, but I just worry. I've never gone a month without seeing you. When are you coming home?"

"Soon, Little Duck," I said, using my most soothing voice. Peeta quietly took my bag from my hands and checked the room one last time before we shut the door behind us.

"Okay. I just need to know you're okay and I'll quit worrying." Her voice was plaintive, sounding like it did when we were children.

I sighed and watched Peeta pull on his shoes and tie them, knots double-laced, as always. "This trip has been one of the most important ones I've ever taken." He looked up at me, one eyebrow raised as if in skepticism. I held his gaze defiantly as I continued. "I wish it would never end."

His face softened, becoming thoughtful, then sad, before he let his eyes drop down to his shoes where his fingers still rested on the laces. I wished my sister goodnight and retreated to the restroom to brush my hair and keep myself from falling all over Peeta once again.

 **XXXXX**

We stayed in Haymitch's house just long enough to notify the proper individuals regarding Haymitch's possessions so that they would be properly disposed of before we took the next train out. With him being legally dead and yet having been so visible and active in the matters of that small town, we were in no position to allow ourselves to be caught up in the confusion that would likely ensue with Haymitch's abrupt disappearance.

The train took us further southwest, to the coastline of Panem, where District 4's seaside towns were located. The trip lasted nearly three days, as we were unable to secure a ticket on an express train. Dread, heavy like the stone I'd cast into the lake, sat in my belly as we neared the place where Peeta was last alive. I suggested several times that we make a detour, stop in District 7, or even make a clandestine visit to District 12. It was, after all, our home and wouldn't it be nice to see it one last time? But Peeta demurred, insisting that we go to the sea.

"There's one more stop we need to make," he kept repeating.

"But why the sudden hurry?" I insisted, cloaking myself in a naive hope that I could prolong all of this, pretending that I didn't know why he was now racing to get to District 4. To Peeta's credit, he didn't indulge my fantasies, but he wasn't cruel or blunt either. He simply smiled, running his hands along my hair and down my braid before releasing it with a small tug.

Those days on the train with him existed beyond all reality. I wasn't sure how things could get any stranger than my traveling with the corporeal ghost of my deceased husband, but it did. No one existed except for us, even though the train was full of people going about their business each day.

No one seemed to notice that Peeta was different, except for a small toddler with curly blond hair who waddled up to him when we were visiting the dining cabin. The child could have passed for Peeta's son as he stared at him, not with fear, but with confusion as to the nature of the kind, blond-haired man he'd been instinctively drawn to.

"He's beautiful," I whispered as his mother tugged him away. I felt a memory barrelling upwards, a memory I pushed violently away for fear it would make me bleed.

Peeta's face went through a quick series of changes, first frowning, then smoothing out to impassivity. "Some people are more attuned to ghosts than others," he said, turning the pages of the magazine next to his sandwich. "Kids, especially."

We fell into a tense silence, which persisted until the little boy finally left the car with his mother.

 **XXXXX**

"Do you know I have a secret?" I said one night, sprawled out on our cabin bunk.

Peeta, who had been placidly reading at his side of the bed, looked up. "Really? Do tell."

"Yes. Something I've never told you." I took up most of the space on the bed as I spread out dramatically. "I had a girlfriend the very first year we went to college."

Peeta closed the book, watching me as I smiled at the memory. "I had no idea."

"Well, you and I weren't actually dating yet. It was weird, really, how it all happened. I'm not exactly a people magnet, but she liked me and pursued me. She was very pretty - astonishingly so given what a social idiot I was."

"I'm not surprised she pursued you. I'd been pining for you since I was five. How long did it last?"

I shrugged. "Four months. But it was...intense. We saw each other every day. She was the first person I'd ever had sex with and I admit - we couldn't get enough of each other. But then it just fizzled out. We never talked about the future, never mentioned marriage. It was just...what it was. So when she left, I let it go. She had marked an important period of my life, but I wasn't as devastated as I would have expected." I turned my head up towards him. "I learned a lot from her but she didn't break me when she left." I rolled over and rested my head on his lap, looking up into his blue eyes, which danced with amusement and a certain amount of awe. "It's strange, the things that connect people."

"Maybe it's because you and I are married?" he whispered, playing with my hair.

I shook my head. "Marriage is a formality, nothing more. No, it's because when I decided to love you, I gave it all to you - I made my existence completely enthralled to yours, and if you'd have stuck around, it would have been good. I gambled on the fact of you living, but I lost."

"I'm sorry," he said, his expression pained.

I shrugged. "Don't be. Maybe the odds weren't in my favor. But you were worth all of it, even with the pain of losing you. Knowing what I know now, I'd still do it all over again, because simply being with you was a gift." I ran my hands along his leg, reveling in the hard muscle beneath his pants. "I'm learning to accept that I will live my entire life and never love anyone the way I love you."

"It's not true," he said, helping me onto his lap. "You can love someone else one day."

I shook my head. "Hey, I just admitted to surviving beyond you. That's all the progress you're going to get out of me today."

Peeta snorted in disbelief, but he didn't argue with me. Instead, he kissed me, murmuring sweet nothings in my ear before asking, "So, do you have any more secrets?"

I snaked my arms around his shoulders, realizing how many things we still had to learn about each other, and wondering if there would ever be enough time. "Yes, but for now, I think I'll keep them to myself."

 **XXXXX**

When we descended from the train, we walked out onto a two-lane road. One side was lined with shops and restaurants, while the oceanside featured a long boardwalk that went on for miles in either direction, punctuated by public beaches, quaint motels and wide stretches of sawgrass and mangroves. The sea was not masked behind even the tallest structures but made itself known by the deafening roar of its call and the overpowering smell of salt. It beckoned from the open spaces of beach and between the alleyways of buildings.

We searched the strip, or rather, I followed as Peeta wandered from one motel to another until we arrived at a small establishment with adjoining restaurant, buried under overgrown vines and trees, hanging thick with bougainvillea and jasmine. A sign with the handpainted name, _The Seacomber_ , was posted proudly at the entrance and above the smell intoxicated me, and I knew we'd arrived even before he'd stopped to consider the building.

"Here," was all he said as he took my bag and stepped inside a tiny office with a faux-marble countertop that served as the front desk. We were greeted by a middle aged woman with a face that smiled easily. A handsome young man, not much younger than me, with an unmistakeable resemblance to the woman, emptied the trash bins in the small office, pausing only to welcome us before exiting through a door in the back.

"I can offer you a poolside room on the first floor," the woman suggested, showing us a map of the U-shaped property. A large pool area sat in the middle, surrounded by lounge chairs. The opening of the configuration faced out to the sea. I examined the layout more closely.

"Is that one available?" I asked, pointing at the leg of the U, at the end of which appeared to be a room that faced directly onto the ocean.

"That's our honeymoon suite complete with a full kitchen, separate bedroom featuring a king-sized bed, and a lounge area that opens onto the balcony overlooking the beach. It's...pricier...than this one." The woman, who wore a name badge identifying her as Cecilia, pointed at the room she had originally assigned us.

"I'll take it," I said, glancing at Peeta. He made to protest, but I silenced him.

"I want this. Please."

He nodded and watched as I signed the credit card slip and gave it to her in exchange for a large room key with the number 11 hanging on it.

I was satisfied when we made it to the room. It was one of the loveliest rooms I'd ever seen - white-painted, wooden furniture adorned the open space. The sofas were dressed in homey prints of yellow and blue with matching pillows and a throw blanket. Sheer white curtains rustled in the breeze of the open window and the current created by the ceiling fans circling above. I set my bag down and crossed to the large balcony that, from the door, appeared suspended directly above the ocean. The shore only became visible when I approached the rail.

The smell arrested me - the aroma of flowers we'd encountered wafting up to our room, mingled with the sea, the sand, even the pungent odor of chlorine from the nearby pool. The squall of seagulls in the distance was the only sound we heard and I was grateful for the sparsely populated beach that spread for miles in each direction.

But it was the ocean that drew my interest. Rolling in on gentle waves under a partially-clouded sky, it did not give a hint of its menace. Rocks piled over each other to the south and the north beach curved into a bay that drew most of the sea-goers' attention, for the water was smooth, almost mirror-like to swim in. But this savage beauty enticed me, nearly making me believe that it's invitation into its depths was benevolent and sincere.

"I never thought I'd come to the sea again," I said. Peeta came up behind me, wrapping his powerful arms around my waist. "I don't know that I can go in it."

He squeezed, pulling me flush against him. "Then don't. I'd never force you to do a thing."

"But what about you? Doesn't it…?"

"Does it disturb me? In the beginning, I was terrified of everything. I didn't understand what was happening. But I came to grips with this," he spread his hands out to indicate the treacherous water that lay before us. "It was one of the first obstacles I had to overcome so I could go where I needed to go, which was to you."

I crossed my arms over his. "I'll never forgive it."

Peeta sighed, turning me to look at him. "It's useless to hate a mindless thing."

"Well, then who else do I complain to about this?" He fell silent on this point. He'd died but he knew as little about everything after as I did. "Well, then, since no one is listening, you'll have to forgive me for hating that thing for taking you away."

He shook his head but didn't protest anymore. It was useless to argue over such things, anyway.

 **XXXXX**

The family who owned the establishment where we stayed was a small one. There was Cecilia and her husband, Caleb, a jolly man somewhat older than her but who still preserved a certain air of humor about him that rendered him youthful. They spoke of two boys - Jayden, who was studying in a residential engineering program in District 2, and Thresh, who also studied in north Panem but stayed back in the summers to help his parents run the motel.

"Thresh sure does love the seaside," Cecilia said fondly of her son, who at that moment was wiping down the machinery in the back of the restaurant. "His older brother had more of an itch to go away, do something different. But Thresh will probably inherit the place, since he loves working here so much."

Peeta and I sipped our coffee as she chatted. We were consistently the last customers to make it down to the dining room before the breakfast bar closed.

"Now, don't you worry," she said as I apologized for the third morning in a row when we arrived only ten minutes before breakfast stopped being served. "We keep those hours for the business folk who come in and have to eat early so they can get on to their meetings and things. You both are obviously on vacation. We can relax the rules some." She winked as Caleb brought hot water for our tea. "I'm on the ins with the owner."

We spent the days walking along the beach, exploring the national park north of our location. There was a reef off the coast that was only a small boat trip from the motel but after two weeks, I still refused to go in the water.

On one of our walks, after I'd turned down yet another invitation by Peeta to go in the water, he paused, considering me before taking off his t-shirt, leaving him in his swim shorts.

"What are you doing?" I said, panicking as he exposed his fair skin to the sun. "You barely put on any sun block!"

"Worry wort," he teased as he gave me a brief, lopsided grin before turning and plunging, head-first, into the ocean.

"No!" I shouted, scrambling to take off my dress and race in after him. When I reached him, I grabbed him by the arm and jerked him towards me.

"Get out! GET! OUT!" I screamed, pulling frantically at him.

"I'm fine, I'm not going out there, Katniss. Please!" he begged as I continued to shout at him until I had managed to drag him out onto the sand.

"How dare you do that to me!" I screamed, hitting him on the chest, not once, but several times, tears now streaming down my face. "You promised you wouldn't force me!"

"I'm sorry!" Peeta said. "I just really wanted to go in, so you could realize that I'm okay. I can take a swim and nothing will happen to me."

I leaned my cheek against his wet shoulder, trying to regain my composure. I remembered the ambulances, the police cars, the National Guard boats out on the open water, combing the rocks, the reef islands, the mangrove fields and not finding anything, leaving me on this very beach, just north of where they were now, kneeling and begging for the courage to throw myself into the sea too.

"It's physical. I…" I looked up at him, calmer but still upset. I wiped my face with the back of my hand, scraping my cheek with the fine grains of sand. "I just can't let it touch me. It's taken too much from me."

"Hey," he said, holding me firmly to him. "I understand. I felt the same way when I first, well, after…"

"You've had more time to deal with it. This is the first time I've been in front of the ocean in three years." I looked out at it, so warm and beautiful, calling to me, presenting itself as it is, without will or volition. It just was and could no more help itself than the wind could stop itself from blowing.

I turned to look at Peeta, who was staring at me with those confounding blue eyes filled with worry. The water dripped from his hair, down his chest - making his hair sparkle again. I ran my fingers through the damp hair, curling them before I released them. Taking a decision, I stood and helped him to his feet and. With his hand firmly in mine, I waded into the warm, lapping waves, shivering despite the temperature.

Terror raced over me but I swallowed it back, breathing deeply in time with the music of the seagulls in the distance. I squeezed Peeta's hand, swaying slightly as we reached the break line, where the sea was most insistent, waves crashing with mindless force against us. Finally, the foamy, roiling water became gentle undulations that spread and caressed us, a contained fury that enticed us to let down our guard, to trust it, but never too much.

Peeta pulled me up so that he was holding me, forcing me to wrap my legs around his waist. The water came to our mid chest, so we let it carry us, each anchored to the other. Despite my terror of earlier, I felt safe and protected, the way I could only feel with Peeta. I still eyed the sea in anger and no small amount of hatred, but I could also admit its beauty and serenity into my consciousness. My arms were wrapped loosely around his neck and I heard his murmurs in my ear, dampened by the low roar of the surf.

"Hmmm?" I asked, unable to capture his words with any clarity.

"Oh," he said, as if he hadn't been aware that he'd been speaking. "It's a silly thing really,"

"Tell me," I insisted.

He looked sheepish but he spoke again, this time so I could hear:

 _We the mortals touch the metals,_

 _the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,_

 _knowing they will go on, inert or burning,_

 _and I was discovering, naming all these things:_

 _it was my destiny to love and say goodbye._

I kissed him then pulled back. "That's beautiful...and so sad…"

Peeta shrugged, pulling me back to my place, head on his shoulders, arms and legs wrapped around him. "It is, isn't it?"

 **XXXXX**

We spent so many days that way, where the goal was not where we were going or what we were doing, but that these things were done together. Peeta had always had a gift for sketching and I sat next to him for hours as he indulged himself, making drawings of me, of himself, the birds and oceans. And he gifted each creation to me, amongst the most precious things he ever gave me.

We took long naps in the afternoon, retreating to our room to talk, read or make love - whatever and whenever the mood struck us. In the quiet rhythms of our time together, we learned more about each other than in the ten years we'd been married, punctuated as they were by the constant freneticism of work, obligations and an ever present to-do list. I imagined myself doing this forever but my imagination would not reach that far. It was funny how people were made - we could get used to almost anything and I eventually became accustomed to the uncertainty, living as fully as possible in the moments I spent with him.

Some days, when Peeta napped and sleep eluded me, I wandered the premises or the beach, though I refrained from going in the water without him. There were small, secret places in that motel, and I wandered into one of them after nearly a month, drawn by the lonely chords of a beautiful piano piece I nearly recognized. I followed it, searching for its source until I reached a conference room, its door closed but not locked. I opened and walked through.

The music drew me in, a gentle melody that was executed with a practiced, if hesitant tempo, as if the player did not fully trust their ability to play. I followed the music, which I recognized as _Comptine d'un Autre_. It took me back to my youth in District 12, and to, Madge, who would invite me to her house nearly every day. Each time, at some point in the visit, she would sit me down next to her as she played this melody and others, all the while pausing between songs to chat. Sometimes we said nothing at all and she just played song after song, which suited me fine because I loved listening to her play. My visits always smelled of tea and cookies, sometimes homemade, mostly bought from Mellark's Family Baker.

The thought brought Peeta to my mind, causing me to nearly turn back. I missed him when I wasn't with him, but he'd had been sleeping so peacefully, I was loathe to disturb him.

I forced the door open and stepped inside. A young girl of about 12 sat at a fairly old and well-worn piano. She wore a blueberry-colored dress with a crisp collar, the color of whipped cream. Her slender fingers danced, occasionally missing a key, which she corrected with a smooth shift of her hand. Her skin glowed smooth and brown, her tight curls fastened into two fluff buns on either side of her head, held in place with ribbons the color of her dress.

Drawn by the music and the nearly picture-like perfection of the girl, I stepped up to the piano, capturing the expression of surprise on the sweetest face I'd ever seen.

"Hi," I said awkwardly, noticing that she wore the same look of being on the verge of a smile that Cecilia and Thresh possessed. "I'm sorry to disturb you."

The girl, who had paused in her playing, spoke with the voice that reminded me of trilling birds. "Oh, you're not. I'm just keeping myself busy, like my brother always says.

I was confused. Cecilia had only mentioned two boys, but I kept it to myself. "My best friend used to play that piece. When I was young, it was my favorite and I always made her play it." I smiled as she giggled. "I'm Katniss."

"I'm Rue," she said, resuming her playing. "I want to practice so I can play at the school assembly. But I have to learn it perfectly first."

"It sounds perfect to me," I said, taking a chair next to her. She took up humming the tune under her breath. I watched the soft undulations of her shoulders as she brought her arms to her side, chasing the tune with child-like persistence. A sound, harsh and short, caught my attention and I turned. It jarred, not because it was loud but because it reminded me of a wound being torn audibly open.

I saw that Thresh had taken a seat at a long table behind me, watching with an expression of agony as the girl played on.

"You can see her?" he asked, the sound barely audible over the tinkling of piano keys.

"Yes," I answered. "She's a very good player, you know."

"Yeah," he said, taking a paper napkin from his pocket and gripping it in his fist. "She comes and goes, always playing that song. I'm the only one who ever sees her. At least others can see your husband."

"You noticed that," I said, more calmly than I should have. But it was clear that Thresh and I were two of a kind. "Why is she here?" My proximity to this world taught me that there was always a reason that the dead lingered, always a knot that they were seeking to untie before they could be free.

"It's me," he said, his voice sounding more tired than anyone should sound at his age. "When she was born, I was so jealous of her. My parents paid so much attention to her, and my older brother - he was too busy with his own things." His face clenched as if he had been struck. "I only learned later that she had been born sickly and my parents were just trying to...keep her comfortable. Alive. By the time I figured it out, I'd wished her dead so many times that I was sure I was the one who made her sick."

"It doesn't really work that way," I whispered, though who was I to lecture anyone on regret?

"When she turned 11, she died." He rubbed his face, as if trying to keep all that he felt by physically shoving those feelings away. "She won't leave because she knows my evil wishes killed her."

Rue stopped playing and turned to look at him, staring without saying a word.

"She does that too," he says. "Just stops and stares at me, like she's accusing me."

My heart ached for him and Rue. For Haymitch and Maysilee. For myself and Peeta. For all the spirits torn away too soon and the broken souls they left behind.

"I don't think she's here because she's angry. They never come to us out of anger." I closed my eyes and thought of my husband, how I could describe in every way his presence in my life but never as a haunting. The living were haunted, not by ghosts, but by their own regrets.

"I think she's just waiting for you to forgive yourself. You were just a child. No amount of wishing in the world could have made her stay or leave."

Thresh stared back at his sister, who held his gaze with innocent purity. "I didn't know, Rue," he said, his voice now broken. "I didn't know."

Rue stood and walked towards him, her small dress swishing about her knees. When she reached him, she touched his hand and smiled, provoking a hiccup of sobs from him as he took the little girl's hand and pressed it to his lips. He held it there as if it would keep all the grief in the world from spilling out of him and blotting the bright sunlight beyond the windows. With her other hand, Rue cupped his cheek and, like a blueberry tinted rainbow, shimmered and dissolved into mist.

 **XXXXX**

I quietly left Thresh in the dignity of his solitude, knowing those moments belonged only to him. I couldn't get a handle on how I felt after that. I stumbled out of the room and down the hall, my memory attempting to betray me again, reminding me that I, too, had an account to settle, a ledger on my balance.

I thought if I walked quickly enough, I could escape it. But it had become another spirit, one less benevolent than all the ones I'd met. It was vengeful, insistent and emanated purely from my guilt. As I pushed the door that opened onto the sparsely populated pool and I wound my way to the stairs that would take me to our suite, the spirit of that memory overcame me, and I had no choice but to stop under its power.

I was back in District 4, the night before Peeta died. We'd return from a walk with Finnick and Annie, both aglow with joy from the good news. They were expecting their first child in the fall, and they had infected both Peeta and I with their excitement. In particular, Peeta was as ecstatic as if the good news had been his own.

When we returned to our guest room, Peeta had acted immediately under that borrowed happiness. He'd taken me and kissed me, his hand sliding over my belly to grip my waist, his intent clear. No matter what happened between us, how angry the fights or how deep the disappointments,we always had this way of connecting, through the physical rhythms of our bodies, moving in synchronicity - a dance that always brought us back together. Our unity of motion coaxed the same in our hearts.

When it was over, Peeta had whispered, "What about us?"

I had known what he was asking for he had asked for it often in the years of our marriage. There had always been a way for me to put him off - first our need to finish school, then the more pressing need to save money - all to hide the real reason I didn't want to have children. I was terrified to death of having them, ruining them and, most compelling and ironic of all, of losing them.

"Maybe when we move back to District 12," I had answered lamely. I knew Peeta had hoped for something more enthusiastic and committed from me but that night, I had failed. And it had been a critical failure.

Peeta was far too sensitive to me. He perceived the hesitation, and, soon, all I felt was ice from his side of the bed. I reached out to touch him, to try to find that connection to him again, the one I had severed with my answer. But he sat up suddenly, swinging his legs over the side of his bed and dressed quickly.

I sat up also, gathering the bed sheets around me.

"Where are you going?"

He paused, his rigid features visible only in profile, but it was enough to capture to depth of his hurt and anger.

"The thing I've always looked most forward to in our life together was the possibility of having a child with you. To have someone who carried a piece of you together with a piece of me." He inhaled loudly, as if it would steady him.

"I want that too, some day…" I said, hearing the emptiness in my words as I said them and knowing that I was continuing to fail miserably.

"One day?" he asked with a bitter laugh. "I don't understand why you would marry someone you don't want to have child with."

"That's not true!" I said, anger now spewing out of my chest, at him and at me. "That's such an unfair thing to say!"

"Why the hesitation then, Katniss? Why else but because I just don't inspire that in you? Maybe someone else would be better able to do that."

"Hey, hold on," I said, oblivious to the fact that my blankets had fallen away and my voice was rising. "You don't have to say things like that to me!"

Peeta stood and whirled around, hands balled into tight fists. "Oh, come on! You keep putting up every fucking obstacle that you can find to actually settling down and starting a family. You keep postponing our move back to 12, you're completely unenthusiastic about me taking over the baker…"

"I just want to make sure we have enough money, that's all! You're just turning everything around so that you don't have to take responsibility for your own unhappiness!"

Peeta grabbed his hoodie and threw it haphazardly over his head. "You know what? My happiness depends as much on you as yours does on me. I take responsibility for that. You're the one who keeps pursuing goals that take no account of how I feel!" He shoved his feet into his shoes. "I don't know if I can keep doing this. I'm taking a walk."

"Don't...don't go," I said, suddenly horrified by the argument, by our words. "Please, let's talk it out. Maybe I can…"

"You can what? Keep putting me off? I'll pass on that, thanks." He turned, opened the door and left the room. I was so stupid. I should have gotten dressed. I should have gone after him. Instead, I kept thinking that if I gave him time, he'd come around, become the Peeta that I loved, the Peeta I'd taken for granted - the patient one, the one who was always willing to apologize first, and make amends.

I chose to sit on that bed and wait in my self-righteous anger.

It was the last time I saw him alive.

 **XXXXX**

Tears blinded me as I finally arrived in our suite. Peeta was awake and making coffee in the kitchen. I tried to calm down, tried to find a stable place. We had so very little, precious time.

"Are you okay?" Peeta asked as I paced the room. Memories had become feelings that rose up to swallow me and God knows I didn't want them. I didn't want them to make their appearance. I pressed my temples as if I could push them back behind the wall of darkness where they could haunt me without my awareness. But it was futile. The time had come, and I could no more keep them back than I could hold back the waves that had taken my husband's life.

"You have no idea what these last three years have been like for me," I said between clenched teeth.

"No," Peeta said softly. "I don't. Why don't you tell me?"

I wiped my cheeks, trying to take in air. "No one has ever hated themselves more. You have to understand," I leaned against the window, gazing at the sea, at once so calm and beckoning, yet full of treachery and death. "I let you die with that stupid argument between us. I didn't realize how...how badly you wanted them. And I was too proud to tell you how afraid I was." I turned to him. "Why did we let it go so long?"

"Because I never pushed you," Peeta said, suddenly next to me, flexing and unflexing his hands in that confounding habit he'd come to have. "I didn't want to force you and have you hate me if you weren't happy with the decision."

"You should have forced me!" I shouted, all of my self-hatred and regret rising out of me in one enormous wave of feeling, powerful enough to pull me under. I was forced to take a seat on the divan. "You don't know how many...how many times...I...cursed myself for saying no to you. For not going after you and telling you, once and for all, that I would give you everything you wanted." I balled my fists against my eyes to keep the tears from escaping again. "If I'd have just done that, you would still be here, with me and not dead...and fading…"

"Katniss, please! I told you not to play this game!"

"I should have had your baby!" There it was, the truth. I would have had someone to comfort me, to make my life worth something in the event he left me and took my heart, my soul, my will to exist with him. "I should have just said yes."

"Katniss…" he whispered, rubbing circles between my shoulder blades while I sobbed. "You weren't ready. I...I made the mistake. I shouldn't have said what I said to you."

His words still stung, even with the distance of memory. "I was...haunted...obsessed...by the thought that if I had only just said yes...if I had only just given in." I sobbed between my words, forcing them to make sense. "And this...thing...this regret...it nearly killed me. And now it traps you here." I look up at him, feeling so unworthy of him, of everything he had given me and continued to give me. "Why did you even bother to come back?"

Peeta sank down onto the divan next to me, flexing his right hand again. "I have a confession to make."

I stopped blubbering enough to listen to him. "I thought I was the only one with secrets."

"That's not entirely true. I...I owe you an apology."

"And apology? Why?" I look down at his hand and notice the subtle phase shifting like Haymitch, noticed his hands as they curled into a fist and opened again. "You're fading, aren't you?" I gripped his arm in a panic. "You're beginning to fade!"

He shrugged, capturing my hand in his and squeezing. "I'm always coming and going. That...that's not...Katniss, I'm not just here for you."

"Not here just for me?" I repeat, never having posed the question of his current state of existence, even to myself before today.

"I didn't realize it at the time, of course, why I'd held on, why, when other spirits were moving on, I was stuck and couldn't leave. I needed to make it right with you. I needed...I shouldn't have left you that way. I should have never said those things to you." His ragged breath prefigured the tears that now fell.

"Shhhh…." I whispered, pulling him towards me. "People say things…"

"You were alone for so long," he continued. "I could hear your grief, Katniss. It was like a lonely chord rising above a symphony of existence, a note that only I could hear. I followed it because if you suffered, it was because of me. I'm the one who left you alone after that argument without making amends. I had no choice but to come to you. I had to fix that."

I gripped him to me, revelling in the feel of him, a feeling I never wanted to duplicate with anyone else ever again. "You have nothing to apologize for. We got a little lost, that's all. But it never changed anything for me. I love you. I loved you then." I looked up at him. "The only thing that could fix everything is if you stayed. We could live here, if you like, or in the mountains. Any place would do."

Peeta shook his head. "I'm not in the right place."

He stood, stepping toward the large window I had just vacated, beyond which lay the sea. He had no fear of it - he'd demonstrated that to me already when we swam in it. But he leaned towards it, as if it beckoned to him, and I knew, I knew I wasn't ready. I could be - I could make myself strong, but just not at that moment.

"No, not yet!" I shouted, hurling myself at him, gripping his arm, not realizing that his edges had been blurring until my hand landed on him and he became solid. "Please, I'm not ready."

He shook his head. "Neither am I," he said, pulling me into a tight embrace. "I'll never be ready to be without you."

We held on to each other for a long while before he spoke again, his words rumbling in the depth of his chest, radiating in my ear.

"Please? Stay?" I begged, but weakly, because I knew it was only a delusion.

"I'm fighting everything to be here, but I only have so much strength until the tide turns and takes me away again."

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Peeta!" I shouted. "That's such a horrible metaphor!"

He froze, perhaps not expecting such a reaction from me, before chuckling into my shoulder. "You're right. That was downright lurid."

 **XXXXX**

After we exchanged more reassurances, more words, the exactness of which I can no longer remember, but there was healing in them. We cleaned up and took a walk down to the small shack of a restaurant that served fresh seafood. We ordered several plates and a bottle of astonishing good, local white wine. We sampled everything on the menu, stuffing ourselves until my belly felt sloshy and full.

I told him all my secrets then. About the time I'd caught a deer after my father died and let it go because I couldn't stand to kill it, even though the meat would have been welcomed. The only time I'd cheated on a test. How much I first envied my sister when she was born. How desolate I was when my father died and my mother couldn't pull herself from the depression that followed.

And he told me his. The crush he'd had on our fourth-grade teacher. The time he nicked gumballs from the sweet shop, so proud he'd gotten away with it that he'd saved those round, shiny treats until they became brittle and nearly disintegrated to powder in his desk drawer. The night his mother had gotten piss drunk and woke him up in the middle of the night to confess that she did love him, with all her heart, but she was a right piece of shit and didn't know how to show anyone how much.

"I can't believe your mother would say that," I said, feeling drunk in my own right.

"That's mom for you - she isn't afraid to drop a surprise drunk confession on you in the middle of the night." He looked up at me, his face suddenly serious. "Does it make me a horrible person that I didn't once think of going to look in on my family?"

I thought about it. "Well, I never once mentioned it so that makes us both lousy human beings."

He lifted his glass in a mock toast, before downing the glass of white wine in one gulp. "Come on, woman. Let's pay this bill. I"ve always wanted to make love to you on the beach."

I smiled as I paid the bill and we strolled for a long way along the beach. It felt terribly like something on a bucket list, which I indulged him. We did make love on the sand, the gritty grains getting everywhere, invading places where they shouldn't be. But when he poured salt water over me with his hands, cupping the warm water and letting it fall over my arms, my shoulders, the warm liquid racing in rivulets over my belly, I forgave all the discomforts. We melted into the gentle waves, clinging in the unfathomable darkness to one another. The waves pushed us gently together and I thought how ironic that, on our second last night together, the sea would conspire to unite what it had so violently torn apart.

 **XXXXX**

Peeta fell asleep as soon as we returned to the suite. I barely closed my eyes, opening them every few minutes to check that he was still next to me. But he was. In the silence of the room, and the depth of his exhaustion, I watched him sleep, memorizing him, cursing my inability to generate even the most rudimentary picture. While at Haymitch's, I had tried to capture him with my cellphone but he simply refused to appear.

"You can't break every single law of physics," he had said as I showed him the shot I'd taken. There was only an outline, like capturing the scattering of light, which only hinted that a person was standing there.

"It's like those ghost pictures that you see in magazines sometimes," I said.

"I guess you're not the first person who's thought about taking a picture of a ghost."

Now, I had only my eyes, my memory, which would fade and leave only the impression of the man I loved, a poor duplicate for someone I had come to need for my very survival. But feast I did, until I was bleary-eyed from exhaustion. It was an exercise in futility, for no amount of staring would ever be enough. And he hid, in the sweetness of his slumber, the most striking thing that made Peeta Mellark who he was - his deep blue eyes, full of the texture of his kind heart and gentle soul.

When he woke at dawn, I was exhausted and he was struggling. His edges blurred and he compulsively flexed his hands into white-knuckled fists. I put my hand over his. "It's how you focus, isn't it?"

He nodded, his face strained. I would never truly grasp how much strength he'd needed to hold himself together until now. He was suffering and I knew that there was nothing to be gained by letting someone I love suffer, even for my sake.

"I wish I could beg you to stay. I wish I knew the formula that would keep you with me forever. But I know now that I can't," I said, holding on to his fists more strongly, my breath threatening to escape my lungs and leave me without speech. Everything in my body rebelled against it, but the time was near, and I had to cut the strings and let him go in peace. I had no idea how I would survive, but I knew, for his sake, that I had to try.

"Do you know that we are only aware of .04% of the universe?" he said suddenly.

"I...okay…" I said in confusion, wondering if his sanity would be the first thing to go.

"It's so immense. It's been around for so long and it's expanding, always expanding, and will do so possibly for all of eternity. And our lives are like a flash in the middle of stars blazing their finite light in an infinite darkness - blink and you miss it." He looked at me with eyes melting into the very stars he described. "I was so privileged to live in that infinitesimal moment in time, to have been alive when you were, and to have had, for that incredibly tiny interval, the gift of your love."

"Peeta...don't…" I was sobbing. Leave it to Peeta and his silver tongue to magnify the pain of his leaving a thousand times by simply opening his mouth.

"But I did what I had to do." He released my hand and place his palm over my belly.

I looked down at the deceptively flat expanse, warmed by the heat of his palm, and suddenly felt something, perceived in one, fierce vision of illumination the tiny life stirring beneath. My mind struggled to accept what my body had already known, had been preparing for since possibly the first moment the universe was cleaved into a billion pieces, setting in motion the timeline that would bring us to this moment.

"How...how could it happen...how can you possibly know?" I babbled in awe as I put my hand over his and held it.

"I told you...I know things."

"But you're a ghost!" I shouted.

Peeta shook his head. "We're the same," he raised his hand, shimmering like a collection of constellations. "We are both light and energy, mass and heat. And love. So much love. Einstein got some of it right, at least."

I held his hand, the solid one, like a captive over the place where our child was taking shape. I had no words for this moment. It was too much for one person, so I just clung to the part of him that was still solid, still here.

After a time, Peeta said, "You'll never be alone again."

I smiled, despite the immense pain of my heart breaking in two. I smiled. I cried. I wailed. And finally, I laughed. I flung my arms around him and laughed and cried into his shoulders. "God help me, Peeta. All I can think about is I'm going to have one helluva story to tell when I get home."

Peeta gripped me and held me close to his him. "Just be sure to leave the good stuff out."

 **XXXXX**

It happened like a star falling out of the sky. At sunset, I helped him down to the sand, where we both stumbled, falling in a pile on top of each other. We laughed like idiots because we were idiots. Who the hell did stuff like this happen to?

But when we sat in the sand and he became nearly transparent, I beckoned him to me one more time and his eyes became filled once again with the color of the dying sun. "We'll see each other again, won't we?"

Peeta became solid as he answered. "We will. Not for a while yet. But we will."

"Okay," I said, running my fingers over his face one more time.

"Can you do me one last favor?" he said, flickering now like a candle.

"Anything."

"Call her _Amada_. Tell her she was given that name because she is beloved."

And with that, he was gone.


	4. Epilogue

**Epilogue - Five Years Later**

I wiped down the last of the tables just as the sun set beyond the mountains that were visible from the main thoroughfare of District 12. Open only one year, Mellark's Tea and Coffee Shop was already considered a fundamental part of District 12's downtown culture. Some of it had to do with the clever nature of the shop, which doubled as a used bookstore where people could read as they took their coffee or tea. But I could not deny that the use of the already familiar Mellark family name was also critical to its success.

Why not? I will always carry the name Mellark.

Switching off the lights, I walked towards the stairs, where the sound of my daughter's laughter mingled with that of my sister's. After completing her nursing degree, Prim had moved back to 12 around the period when I'd returned home, just in time for the birth of Amada. There was a great deal of shock when my family found out I was pregnant, and a powerful suspension of belief was required to absorb my explanation: that somehow, Peeta and I had availed ourselves of a sperm storage facility so that in the event we could not conceive naturally, we would still be able to have a child that was biologically ours. It was a ridiculous fabrication and, because I was a terrible liar, the doubt persisted all throughout the months I carried our child, especially on the part of the Mellarks, who believed me to be crazy.

But when Amada was born, those widely-held doubts were dispelled, melting away further and further as she grew, to the point that even Mrs. Mellark had to begrudgingly acknowledge the girl's connection to her family. Olive-skinned, like me, with the same Indian-black hair, it was her eyes that could not be denied - round and uniquely blue, with brilliant, gold flecks, just like her father's. The sweet expression, an invitation to an open and gentle spirit, was one that Peeta had always possessed, the same one that now graced the little girl's face. Whether it defied all logic or reason, there was no denying that Amada was Peeta Mellark's daughter.

I opened the door to the apartment to find Prim seated cross-legged before the coffee table covered in a child-sized tea set. Amada primly served her aunt tea in the company of a pair of stuffed bears and a tiny pink pig. When Amada looked up, she smiled and dropped the things she held to run towards me.

"Mommy, mommy!" she squealed, melting into my arms.

"Hey, baby," I said, snuggling into her neck, the warm, sweet smell of baby filling me with a deep sense of contentment.

Prim stood, dusting off her pants. "She did all her reading and had a snack." She poked Amada's nose, provoking another round of giggles. "She also got into my things again and tried to put on my nursing uniform! I even took a picture of her."

Amada giggled, hiding her face to escape the accusations.

"Honey, I told you that you shouldn't take things out of your aunt's room. Remember?"

A muffled "Mmm...hmm" came from somewhere below my chin but Prim protested, "I don't mind. She was too adorable!"

"Trying to discipline here!" I hissed but that only resulted in more giggles and my squeezing Amada to me even more.

"Are you all packed up yet?" I asked, setting her down finally. She was four years old but she was a heavy child.

"Yes!" she said. "I packed all the toys I'm going to take."

I looked at Prim over Amada's head and winked. "Are there some clothes in there too?"

"I double-checked and made sure," Prim reassured me with a laugh. "One whole week of beach clothes for my little goose!"

"Do you want to come with me while I pack?" I asked Amada, hoping to give Prim a break. She had picked Amada up from school and stayed with her the entire afternoon.

"Yes, yes!" Amada said, grabbing Prim by the hand. "You help too, Primmie!"

I began to protest, hoping to give Prim a reprieve, but Prim just held Amada's hand tighter and let herself be dragged to my bedroom.

"We should help your mommy. Then we'll call grandma together so you can say goodbye. Your train leaves too early tomorrow morning to call her."

"Okay!" she said, letting Prim's hand go and skipping ahead of us, having become distracted with some scheme or other. I watched my little girl, my heart swelling with love and gratitude, as it often did, for the gift of her existence in my life.

"I'll try not to take very much - just a few dresses and my bathing suits," I said as we entered my bedroom and Prim reached into my closet to take out the rolling suitcase.

"Makes sense," she said. I could feel her eyes on me as I moved about the room, pulling things from drawers to place them inside my suitcase. "Are you staying in the same place?"

"In the Sea Comber? Yes. Cecilia and her family know me already. They are always so kind to Amada."

Prim nodded, passing the things I'd set out so that I could fit them in the small space. No matter how practical I was, I always ended up taking too much.

My sister went quiet again, like a song that pauses but you know will soon start playing again. "Katniss?" she asked, her voice now sheepish and small.

"Yes?" I answered, pretending to be oblivious to the way her voice, her entire attitude had changed.

"I know you like to go alone to the sea with Amada - your own special vacation and all. But...I mean...are you really alone when you go there?" She looked up and caught my eye, holding my gaze. She knew how hard it was for me to lie when she stared at me like that.

"Why would you ask something like that?" I asked defiantly.

She glanced away at her hands, releasing me momentarily from her penetrating examination, which she took up again after several moments. "It's just...I'm your sister. You can tell me anything. About you. Or about Amada…"

"I…" I tried to break eye contact with her but she rounded the bed and stood before me. My sister - all grown up, her thick, blond hair loose and wild, gentle eyes capable of turning to steel at a moment's notice. Besides Peeta and Amada, Prim was always the great love of my life.

"You're right. I'm not. Peeta's there. I go there because it's where I feel him the most. And he never leaves me alone."

"Katniss..." she began, the disbelief clouding her eyes, making her hear, not the truth, but what she wanted to hear. That's what we all do, I guess. When things are too incomprehensible or unbearable, we bend reality so we don't have to accept it.

"Look, I don't want to hear the 'It's time you move on' lecture from you." I took her by the shoulders, squeezing her gently. "Some days, I pray that you will love someone the way I loved Peeta. But then there are other days…" I bite my lip. I don't want to be foolish and cry. "I hope you will never love a man the way I loved him. Because that kind of love takes hold of you and never lets you go. He rooted his way into my heart and I will never pull him out again. I'm perfectly fine with that. And you need to be, too."

"Is it enough, though?" Prim asked.

I sighed, thinking through my answer. "We didn't get much time together, but what we had is enough to sustain me for a lifetime."

"It just sounds so...lonely," Prim said, pulling me into her embrace.

I shake my head, holding her close to me. "I'm not lonely. Peeta is always with me, no matter what."

 **XXXXX**

We took the first train out of District 12. It was the express so we were scheduled to arrive by the next day. This worked out for Amada in particular, who would have had a terrible time staying inside that train for more than a day and a night. The novelty would have worn off, and she would have become unrequited.

As it was, she spent a good portion of the trip familiarizing herself again with the train, visiting the different train cars while I trailed her to keep her from getting hurt or lost. When lunchtime arrived, we ate in the dining car, after which she finally settled down enough to color and work on her own drawings, being in possession of a talent for art similar to her father's.

Those moments of calm gave me a chance to think about this trip, the one I have taken every year since Amada was born. Prim thought it a lonely journey, but what she couldn't understand was I had left someone on that beach, not once, but twice, someone who was integral to who I was a person. She didn't understand the way I missed him, the way I needed to feel that he was still there, waiting, so that I could find the courage to get through the rest of my life without him. It was crazy, I know, but I had never claimed to be a perfectly sane woman.

One day, I might invite her to come. I can't help but think that was what she was waiting for. But not yet. These trips, these moments, they still belonged to my husband and I, and eventually, to my daughter. I was not ready to invite the outside world, with its cold rationality and its therapies and 'moving ons.' I didn't want anyone trying to talk my way out of this. I had lived something, real and concrete, even if it involved things I would never completely understand. But I was prepared to coexist with that uncertainty.

When the trained pulled into the station and opened its doors, I was assaulted by the exact same smell of sea and vegetation as my very first visit. I gripped Amada's hand as our bags trailed behind us and began the usual running commentary of the place, pointing out the shops and restaurants that Peeta and I had visited. Amada was getting to an age where she was beginning to remember my stories.

"There's an ice cream shop down that road. I'll take you there. They make homemade ice cream in a funny machine."

Amada giggled, nearly jumping up and down in excitement. "Can we go now? Can we go now?"

"Not right now. I want to check in first and put our clothes away. But I'll bring you tomorrow afternoon, okay?"

Amada was captivated by everything she saw. I know she remembered something of our previous trips but she had been so small, and had napped so often, that I wonder if it was only an impression of the place that had stayed with her.

When we finally arrived at the Sea Comber, Cecila greeted us warmly, scooping little Amada up into her arms as Caleb took our bags. I protested that I could carry them, but Caleb shook his head and said, "You have enough with that little one right there." I didn't miss the wistful look they gave Amada, fawning over her to the point of ignoring me completely, but they had never spoken to me directly about Rue and I would not be the one to press the issue.

I searched the small office for Thresh, but Cecila told me he'd gone out on a supply run and would be back soon enough.

"We're a little early," I said, signing the room receipt. "I'll catch up to him later."

"He's doing so well. He's been working at a small firm not 15 miles inland so he commutes from here every day. Says the day will never come that he'll leave."

"He's a good, loyal man," I said sincerely, to which Cecilia responded by giving me a strong hug.

"He thinks mighty well of you, too. He was looking forward to you ladies coming all week," she said.

"Mommy's going to buy me ice cream tomorrow!" Amada exclaimed.

"Is she, now? Why, if you have dinner in the diner today, I bet we could rustle up some dessert for you. What do you think about that, sugar pie?" Cecilia said.

Amada squealed in delight and it was all I could do to tear her away from the front desk.

When we arrived in our room, Caleb had already left the two bags inside. It was the same room every time - the honeymoon suite, overlooking the sea. When I'd settled Amada in front of the television, I stepped out onto the large balcony, letting the feeling of the room settle over me. I closed my eyes and imagined Peeta behind me, his arms around my waist, chin resting on my shoulder, and I had to take a deep, noisy breath to keep from crying. He was everywhere in this room, this beach, this sea, and I let my mind wander, let myself self search for him.

The blaring of a television commercial pulled me from my thoughts, forcing me back into reality. After washing up, we descended to the small restaurant and ordered our dinner. Thresh bounded up, bigger and stronger than before, if possible. There was a special understanding between the two of us - he was the only person in the world who had captured Peeta's true nature. We had both held back the ones we loved with chains made of regret. We had both glimpsed behind the veil of reality and seen things few others ever would in their mortal experience.

Thresh hugged me tight before tossing Amada up into the air. "You just keep growing, don't you, half-pint?"

"I'm flying!" she cried out as Thresh flew her through the air like an airplane.

After they'd tired of their game, she raced to the large window of the dining hall and looked out at the surf. She was ready to get into the sand, her restlessness causing her to squish her face against the glass, leaving cheek and nose marks on its smooth surface.

"She's a happy kid," he said, watching her slide ever so stealthily towards the door that lead to the beach front.

"Yeah. She's the only girl in the family right now, so she gets spoiled by everyone." I glanced over at him, appraising him. "You look pretty content too."

He smiled a wide, toothy grin that was designed to turn heads, while hiding all its own secrets, secrets that every young person should have. "I can't complain."

I crossed my arms, nodding. "I bet."

When I looked back, Amada had succeeded in slipping out the door onto the wooden deck that led to the sand dunes, and eventually, the sea. I waved Thresh off, who let his gaze linger on me in a way I was no longer accustomed to. It was an invitation, a promise perhaps but I didn't think I'd ever again be a girl who would hope for such things. I'd had my moment of perfection with Peeta and it had been enough. I turned, breaking that weak hold his gaze had on me, pushing it firmly out of my mind and followed my daughter out the door.

I set up our beach blanket and toys along the shore while Amada did her best to scatter the birds that settled in flocks to dig for sand crabs with their narrow, sharp beaks. She ran between them, dispersing them like a cloud of smoke before they coalesced and settled a few feet from her, only to invite Amada's attention again. I laughed at her as she raced down the beach like a wild puppy until she got too far and I had to run after her, carrying her back to our spot on the sand.

"Sand castle time," I said, handing her a neon-green plastic shovel. I collected water from the sea, my mind only half on the task as Amada became more and more focused on her construction. _I'm here_ , I whispered to the breeze. _I'm waiting._

Amada worked and I drifted mentally, the sun waning slowly until it was just hovering over the horizon. I leaned forward as my husband's colors banded, warm and gentle, over the sky. The wind picked up, caressing my back, my shoulders, resting warm and soft on my neck, my cheek. I watched my daughter who, in the eternal purity of a child's instinct, paused in her work to cast a glance at that sunset. The foam shimmered, silver and grey as the water became insistent, reaching for my feet. I allowed it. _Touch me_ , I whispered. _I'm here._

He never appeared. He was no longer in a place where he could do that. But Peeta was everywhere - in the beauty of the sunset, the warm rush of water on sand, the wind that engulfed me, held me, rocked me in welcome, like a prodigal returning home. My daughter sighed, unconscious but not unaware of her father's embrace, even if she could not quite verbalize it. He said we were all made of the same things - of light and mass and love, so much love. And I bathed in the warm glow of his love and sent it back to him, fierce and eternal. I whispered his name and he whispered mine back, on the salt and current of the sea.

One day, she will ask me if it is her father she feels on the beach at sunset. And I will tell her the truth. Yes, he is here. He is more than your father. He is love. And he surrounds us with himself. Because you are beloved. We are beloved. It is the fuel of my vigil, the secret to my survival. It's at the very heart of my existence. And it is in this place of hope and love where he can be found. Waiting for me.

Always.

 **XXXXX**

 **I know this was something of a heart-breaker. I hope you have enjoyed it nonetheless. The left me more filled with hope, despite the fact that we were, in fact, dealing with a ghost. The idea was not necessarily to preserve a life, regardless of cost, but to have a satisfying story that ended in a way that makes sense. I hope I accomplished that.**

 **Please come check out my tumblr, titaniasfics, for more updates and snippets of my stories. I am also embarking on original writing - there is a link to my author page also.**

 **Thank you and feel free to comment/review! I love reader comments!**


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